A slim line connector based on Serial ATA Revision 2.6 is mounted on an expansion bay of a notebook personal computer (PC). Such a slim line connector employs pin forms and a pin arrangement that are specific to a Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) interface (I/F).
A slim line connector has only one pin for identifying a device mounted on an expansion bay, which is a pin for detecting an existing device (for example, an optical disk drive (ODD)). In addition, since ground (GND) pins are arranged at both ends of a SATA signal line to protect high-speed communication from noise, there are no empty pins.
Thus, in order to identify a new device (a USB device, for example, a USB hub), a connector is changed or another connector is added, which results in mounting of a nonstandard connector. Such a description above is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2006-243148 and Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 09-62583.